‘Who?’ Brunetti asked, slipping a used boat ticket into his book and setting it beside him on the sofa.
He was just pushing himself to his feet when Paola said, ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t listen to your calls.’
He froze, bent over like an old man with a bad back. ‘Madre di Dio,’ Brunetti exclaimed. He stood and stared across at Paola, who remained at the door, giving him a strange look.
‘What is it, Guido? Did you hurt your back?’
‘No, no. I’m fine. But I think I’ve got it. I think I’ve got him.’ He walked to the armadio and took out his coat.
When she saw him, Paola asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going out,’ he said, offering no explanation.
‘What’ll I tell this woman?’
‘Tell her I’m not here,’ he answered and, a moment after he spoke, that was true.
Signora Mitri let him in. She wore no make-up and the roots of her hair showed grey at the parting. She wore a shapeless brown dress and seemed to have grown even stouter in the time since he had last seen her. As he came close to shake her hand, he caught a faint whiff of something sweet, vermouth or Marsala.
‘You’ve come to tell me?’ she said when they were seated in the sitting-room, facing one another across a low table on which stood three soiled glasses and an empty bottle of vermouth.
‘No, Signora, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.’
Her disappointment pulled her eyes closed and drew her hands towards one another. After a moment, she glanced across at him and whispered, ‘I’d hoped…’
‘Have you read the papers, Signora?’
She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She shook her head.
‘I need to know something, Signora,’ Brunetti said. ‘I need you to explain something to me.’
‘What?’ she asked neutrally, not really interested.
‘You said, when we last spoke, that you listened to your husband’s conversations.’ When she made no acknowledgement that he had spoken he added, ‘With other women.’
As he had feared, her tears started, trailing down her cheeks and dropping on to the thick fabric of her dress. She nodded.
‘Signora, could you tell me how you did this?’
She looked up at him, her eyes pulled together in complete confusion.
‘How did you listen to the calls?’
She shook her head.
‘How did you do it, Signora?’ She didn’t answer and he went on. ‘It’s important, Signora. I need to know this.’
As he watched, her face blushed red with embarrassment. He’d told too many people that he was like a priest, that all secrets were safe with him, but he knew this to be the lie it was, so he didn’t try to convince her. Instead, he waited.
Finally she said, ‘The detective. He attached something to the phone in my room.’
‘A tape-recorder?’ Brunetti asked.
She nodded, her face growing even redder.
‘Is it still there, Signora?’
Again, she nodded.
‘Could you get it for me, Signora?’ She didn’t acknowledge having heard him, so he repeated, ‘Could you get it for me? Or tell me where it is?’
She put one hand over her eyes, but the tears continued to spill out from under it.
Brunetti waited. Finally, with her other hand, she pointed over her left shoulder, towards the back of the apartment. Quickly, before she had time to change her mind, Brunetti got up and went out into the hall. He walked down the corridor, past a kitchen on one side, a dining-room on the other. At the back, he glanced into one room and saw a man’s suit rack standing against the wall. He opened the door opposite and found himself in a teenager’s dream room: white chiffon flounces surrounded the lower part of the bed and dressing-table; one wall was entirely covered with mirrors.
Beside the bed stood an elaborate brass phone, its receiver resting on top of a large square box, the round dial a memento from an earlier time. He approached it, knelt and pushed aside the billows of chiffon. Two wires led from the base, one to the phone jack and the other to a small black recorder no larger than a Walkman. He recognized it as one he’d used in the past, when speaking to suspects: voice-activated, its clarity of sound was remarkable for something so small.
He detached the recorder and went back into the sitting-room. When he entered she still had her hand over her eyes, but she looked up when she heard him coming in.
He set the machine on the table in front of her. ‘Is this the tape recorder, Signora?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘May I listen to what’s on here?’ he asked.
He’d once watched a television programme, one that showed the way snakes could mesmerize their prey. As her head moved back and forth, following him as he leaned down towards the recorder, he thought of it and the thought made him uncomfortable.
She nodded in agreement and, her head again following his gesture, he leaned down and pressed the ‘Rewind’ button and, when that clicked to show the tape was rewound, he pushed ‘Play’.
Together they listened, as other voices, one of them that of a dead man, filled the room. Mitri spoke to an old school friend and made a date for dinner; Signora Mitri ordered new drapes; Signor Mitri called a woman and told her how eager he was to see her again. At this, Signora Mitri turned away her face in shame and the tears came again.
There followed minutes of the same mixture of calls, all equal in their banality and inconsequence. And nothing, now that he had embraced death, seemed more inconsequential than the vocal expression of Mitri’s lust. Then he heard Bonaventura’s voice, asking Mitri if he would have time to look at some papers the next evening. When Mitri agreed, Bonaventura said he’d stop by at about nine or perhaps send one of the drivers over with the documents he wanted Mitri to see. Then he heard it, the call he had prayed would be there. The phone rang twice, Bonaventura answered with a nervous ‘si?’ and the voice of another dead man was heard in the room. ‘It’s me. It’s done.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m still here.’
The pause that followed this was evidence of Bonaventura’s shock at this rashness. ‘Get out. Now.’
‘When can I see you?’
‘Tomorrow. In my office. I’ll give you the rest.’ Then they both heard the phone put down.
The next thing they listened to was the shaken voice of a man asking for the police. Brunetti reached over to the recorder and pressed ‘Stop’. When he looked across at her, all emotion had been blasted from her face, all tears forgotten. ‘Your brother?’
Like the victim of a bombing, she could do nothing but nod, eyes wide and staring.
Brunetti got to his feet and reached down to pick up the recorder. He slipped it into his pocket. ‘I have no words to tell you how sorry I am, Signora,’ he said.
28
He walked home, the small tape-recorder heavier in his pocket than any pistol or other instrument of death had ever been. It pulled him down, and the messages it contained weighed on his spirit. So easily had Bonaventura been able to prepare his brother-in-law to meet his death: no more than a phone call and the message that the driver would pass by with some papers he wanted him to read. Mitri, unsuspecting, had let his killer in, had perhaps taken papers from him, turned away to put them on a table or desk. Thus had he given Palmieri the opportunity he needed to slip the fatal wire over his head and draw it tight around his neck.
To a man as strong and practised as Palmieri, it would have been the work of an instant, and then perhaps another minute, even less, to pull the ends tight and hold them until Mitri’s life was choked out of him. The traces of skin under Mitri’s fingernails proved that he had tried to resist, but it had been hopeless from the moment Bonaventura called to talk about delivering the papers, from the instant, whenever that was and for whatever reason, Bonaventura decided to free himself of the man who endangered his factory and its squalid business.